my mages cast crap spells?

[MaxWilson]

Sometimes I don't understand the tactical AI's choices at all. For instance, I was attacking Solaris' indy province of Knights of the Chalice + Flagellants with a couple of Sauromancers and Shamans and some chaff. The Sauromancers were scripted to cast <Communion Master, Storm of Thorns, SoT, SoT, SoT>. Come battle time, the knights charge my lines, my mages cast Communion Master and then, when the knights are seven squares away, cast Storm of Thorns as scripted... at the flagellants 18 squares away! I was relying on SoT for its stopping power, and it's not like there was any danger of friendly fire. Totally baffling to me. It turned out all right, and in fact on the fourth round of battle my mages took some time out from shelling flagellants to tie up some knights, but there are times when I don't understand my mages at all. I'd have them executed for incompetence but there's no disband command...

Edit: actually, now that I think about it, I bet the AI was optimizing for damage output. Since Knights have high Prot, they hardly take any *damage* from the vines, so the flagellants look like a better target. I suppose next time I expect a situation like this I should script Tangle Vines instead even though it has a much smaller AoE.

-Max

[Jazzepi]

I think the biggest problem with Dominions 3 is the distinct inability to easily manage the troops.

What we need is...

1. A better system for handling mage scripts. A single set of 9 hotkeys is isn't very useful especially when you can't readily see what is stored in them without over writing some commander's commands. I'd like to see a graphical interface where you could drag and drop premade scripts into commanders. It would be great if you could create a library of them and give them names, taking them from game to game. People could exchange script libraries and such, or post juicy ones they really liked.

2. Longer scripting buffers, with the option to end in a "always cast this spell" mode. I'd say something like 20 actions instead of the 7-8 that are allowed now.

3. The ability to turn off the casting AI on individual leaders. I find this so irritating when my mages completely ignore what I want them to cast.

4. A better army setup screen. There needs to be a way to toggle between individual unit displays, and big stacks of them. It would also be nice to be able to use the mouse in this respect, to drag and drop after using a box to highlight instead of being forced to select the units then click on the commander. But really the thing that's desperately needed is a compressed unit view where you can drag hundreds or even thousands of chaff troops around at a time.

5. You should be able to limit mages on which spells they can cast in general without specifying. A little box that pops up and allows you to check or uncheck individual types of spells. A good example would be that the box has a selection for Buffs, Offensive, Defensive, Self-Buffs (making a distinction between buffs that improve troops and just the caster). Obviously the details would be a little complicated, but I think it'd be extremely useful.

[MaxWilson]

Playing devil's advocate here, motivated by the phrase "biggest problem": All of those ideas sound nice. At the same time, to a certain extent the art of war is about learning what works and what doesn't within the constraints you have, and as long as I can figure out WHY things work the way they do (Storm of Thorns optimizes for damage) I can still optimize. Stupid mages are one thing. Stupid, random and uncontrollable mages would be something entirely different. (You could still optimize, but it would be along the lines of "don't research the conjuration tree if you want to be able to cast Fire Storm." No fun.) I don't think the UI is a problem as it stands.

But, yeah. #2 and #5 would be especially great, and I could see how #4 would help some people a lot. Maybe we could agree that the combat UI is the area most urgently needing attention? (Well, that and disbanding units.) Although I'm all pumped about automatic site searching working properly in the next patch. Yay for Johan!

-Max